


WiseBlood

by Covenmouse



Series: The Lion's Roar [7]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-06 15:30:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20509295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Covenmouse/pseuds/Covenmouse
Summary: For months, maybe even years, Byleth has danced around the ever growing pile of questions concerning who she is, her family ties, and what exactly the Archbishop wants of her. Questions that, once answered, will change not only the way she views herself, but the very fabric of the world.She isn’t ready. Her enemies won’t give her a choice.





	1. Chapter 1

Three days. That’s how long their peace lasts. Three more days.

During that time, the Blue Lions fall back into the routine they’d had before their outing to the Rhodos’ coast. Outwardly, everything is the same as it has been the past eleven months. Byleth is their Professor; they are her students. Amongst themselves, however, there has been a palpable shift; one that is difficult for Byleth to summize, but no less real. 

They still call her “Professor,” but it feels like more of a nickname than a title. A joke between friends. She is their leader, yes. She still gives out assignments and helps with school work, and works with them to create their schedules. But they are altogether less formal in their responses; less star-eyed and deferent. And all they want in return is for her to respect their presence; to stop editing herself and simply _ be _ with them. These are the three best days she has in the Academy. 

She should have known it wouldn’t last.

On the third day, Byleth stops in at Seteth’s office towards the evening, rapping her knuckles against the door even though it’s wide open. It’s taken these three days of peace to work her way up to this conversation, though she’s sensed Flayn wanting to ask her about it several times. They’ve given her space, too; she’s grateful for that. Now, it is time to repay their patience.

The girl who still exists in the back of her mind continues to say nothing. It would be annoying if some part of Byleth didn’t understand the problem, on some level, and agree with the girl’s solution. They are not ready. 

They are not— 

“Good Evening, Professor. Can I help you with something?”

Byleth takes that as an invitation to step inside. She closes the door behind herself and faces Seteth to find his eyebrow raised and pen stalled over his parchment. She can’t read well upside down, but it looks like a mission edict. 

He sets the pen aside as Byleth’s hands lock behind her back. 

“I was hoping to make an appointment to speak with Lady Rhea,” Byleth says, slowly. “The matter is personal, but…”

She drifts off, unsure how to end that. She isn’t even sure that she should come to Seteth with this, but he was in charge of Rhea’s schedule and the Archbishop had been very busy with reports and various officials of late. 

Seteth’s smile is wide and strangely proud to Byleth’s estimations. He nods, setting aside the page he’d been working on in favour of a larger, bound tome. As he opens it and fingers through the pages to a sheet marked at the top with the coming week’s dates, he says, “Certainly, though I feel she will be open to making room for you whenever you wanted to speak.”

“I don’t want to be a bother,” Byleth hedges. In truth, she’s far more nervous about this than she has been any battle she’s ever fought. Part of her wants it to take a few days, maybe even a week, for an open moment. Then again, that might just give her time to rethink the entire venture. Again.

“Stop being such a coward,” Sothis grumbles in her oh-so-distant voice.

“‘A _ bother _,’” Seteth repeats, as though she’s said something humorous. “I do not believe you have anything to fear, in that respect. But, if you’d prefer, I could put you in for a Saturday luncheon?”

Two days? More like a day and a half. That… that could be enough. 

Byleth nods. “Yes. Thank you." 

He scratches something on the book with a graphite stick. Taking that as dismissal, Byleth turns to go before his voice calls her back, “I know you said it was a personal matter, but may I ask if this is regards to our conversation the other day?”

She should have known she wouldn’t get away so easily. Byleth faces him once more, and bobs her head once. 

“I am glad to hear that.” He steeples his fingers before him, elbows leaning heavily upon his desk. “There is something I’ve been wanting to ask of you.”

He gestures loosely to the chair across from his desk. Feeling a little trapped, and not sure why, Byleth accepts it with another nod. 

“You mentioned your father wrote about Rhea and Hestia in his journal. I assume you have it? The journal, I mean.”

“I do.”

“I understand that must be very special to you given the circumstances, but I was wondering if you might allow me to read those passages.”

Byleth’s fingers curl into fists upon her knees. Though she manages to curtail the adamant ‘no’ that wanted to come forth, it must be obvious upon her face. 

Seteth looks almost apologetic as he adds, “I know it is sensitive subject, but I can promise I have no intention of absconding with the volume or defacing it in any way. I only… well. The things you mentioned that night have intrigued me, as they present an answer to a bit of a puzzle I’ve been working on since you both arrived here. I should like to understand Jeralt’s position on the matter. That is all.”

“What puzzle?”

“To be frank: you.”

The words aren’t surprising. They aren’t even hurtful, though Byleth suspects they could have been—had she and Seteth not talked things out a few days earlier. “And if you come to any conclusions…?”

“I will share them with you,” Seteth promised, “Though only if I am certain I am right. I would not like to trouble you with fruitless speculation.”

Normally, Byleth would press the subject. She’d want to know his hypothesis and not settle for half-truths. But her heart already knows, doesn’t it? It’s her mind which isn’t ready to acknowledge it, and so she simply nods her assent.

“Alright,” she says. “I’ll bring it by tomorrow.”

Seteth’s relief is evident in his slumping shoulders and tired smile. “Thank you.”

Byleth nods again, standing. She turns from the desk to leave when her gaze falls upon the Spear of Assal, now displayed upon the wall of Seteth’s office in a simple brace. From this distance, the relic seems ordinary enough, if beautiful. It lacks the dire presence she sensed before; no sense of awareness; no skin crawling _ wrongness _. Of course, she’d been touching it, then, if indirectly.

“I prefer to have it nearby,” Seteth says, as though she’s going to question what it’s doing on his wall. 

Shaking her head, Byleth’s hand drifts behind her to touch the sheath strapped to her back. It juts out an angle, allowing her fingers to find purchase on the leather. But without skin to skin contact with its strange material, the Sword of the Creator doesn’t offer the sense of completion that would mitigate the wrongness emanating from it’s presence; one she’s grown used to these past few months of carrying it. 

Seteth is watching her again, that same disconcerted expression on his face. 

“What are they made of?”

His eyebrows raise slightly; his gaze darting between her and the Spear of Assal. “The relics, you mean?”

“Yes. It isn’t any sort of metal I’ve ever seen. It feels more organic, but it cuts like diamond.” 

Standing, Seteth takes a deep breath and crosses to the spear. He lifts it carefully from the wall and presents it to her. His brows raise further as she takes an immediate step away, coming up hard against the opposing wall.

After a moment’s quiet, he says, “This is what bothered you when we returned, isn’t it? Not the flying or the height.”

Byleth swallows thickly, unsure what to say. She no longer feels comfortable lying, even to tell him no. But telling the truth still feels… _ unkind _. It feels like something which shouldn’t be said. Not to him. 

There doesn’t seem to be any other way out of this conversation, though. She has to pick one.

And then Byleth looks again at his face, at the ease with which he holds the spear; the nonchalance. He has no fear of it turning him into a monster, certainly. Is that the only reason Sylvain dislikes the Lance of Ruin? Does he avoid touching it _ only _because of what the lance did to his brother, and not because the touch itself sends waves of sickness through his very core? 

She still hasn’t asked.

“You don’t feel it, do you?”

“I will assume not as I’m not certain of what you mean.”

“It’s—it’s probably just my imagination, then.” An imagination she never believed she had. But maybe it’s only that her imagination is caught up in paranoia. Weapons that can turn people into monsters are bound to generate a little unease, right? 

Another few seconds tick by before Seteth sighs and returns the Spear of Assal to its resting place. “I am still curious, but if you do not care to speak of it now, I will not press. However, should you change your mind, I would be quite interested in an explanation.”

Byleth nods her understanding, thanks him, and makes her exit before anything else can distract her, or tempt her into saying more than she wants. 

#

She’s still thinking of this when she sits down to eat with the rest of the Blue Lions a short while later. The dining hall is crowded and loud with students gossiping about the upcoming graduation ceremonies. They are, perhaps, being a little overzealous in their excitement, but it’s only understandable given the continued absence of the Knights of Seiros. Everyone is aware that something is amiss.

Paranoia, Byleth reminds herself, taking a long sip of tea. 

“It’s hard to believe this will all be over in a month,” Ingrid is saying, a few places down the table. She pushes her food around on her plate, pretending to eat. 

“It doesn’t seem really real,” agrees Annette. “I’ve gotten so used to thinking of the monastery as home… but you’ll be going to the capital, won’t you, Ingrid? For the ceremony?”

Byleth blinks, refocusing on the conversation. “Ceremony?”

“That’s right!” Sylvain points loosely at Dimitri, “We’ll be going from this directly to your coronation.”

Dimitri hums at the question, as though returning from the nether—just as Byleth had. Presently he says, as though just now contemplating the matter, “Technically, my coronation won’t be for another three months, at least. Even then, if the situation with the church does not wane I fear it may be moved again to accommodate the Archbishop’.”

“As the issue would be _ her _ schedule and not _ yours _, I fail to see why you may not assume the throne before that. Surely it is merely a formality.” 

Though Ingrid looks uncomfortable at Dedue’s suggestion, Dimitri offers Dedue an apologetic smile. “I understand your frustration, my friend, but I am afraid the other nobles will not see it that way. We shall still need their support.”

“Their support for what?” Ingrid frowns. “I’m not sure what your rush is, but you _ are _ the rightful King.”

“I am also a child in their eyes, at present,” Dimitri replies, “And my uncle has held the throne these past few years with… a certain amount of ease.”

“If by ‘ease’ you mean ‘letting everyone do what they want’,” Felix mutters. His comment is still easily heard by everyone near him, including Byleth. Dimitri’s responding nod is serious. 

Byleth frowns, trying to quell the sudden unease percolating in her stomach. She’s known who and what Dimitri is; has known it since they met. He’d introduced himself as the Crown Prince, before anything else. It was a given he would leave this monastery and assume his throne—she _ knows _ that. Why should it bother her?

Because on top of everything else, the reality that he—that _ all _of them—would soon be leaving had slipped her mind. Just when they were making progress on actual friendship, everything was going to change again.

She was going to be left completely alone. Even the fact that her father’s Company had adopted the monastery as their “home base” couldn’t dissuade the melancholy creeping upon her. After all, they spent more time afield than loitering around the town. She’d be lucky if Luca returned to visit before winter. And by then…

By then her students would have been gone at least four months. The fact that new ones will have taken their places isn’t any kind of comfort.

“Well, regardless, there _ will _ be a ceremony, right?” Annette says, her cheer making it obvious that she’s trying to cover the tension at the table. “My mother told me stories about your father’s coronation. She said the party went on for a whole week, with lots of dancing and music, and a formal ball held every night.”

“A ball every night?” Mercedes asks, touching her chin thoughtfully. “That sounds like a fable.”

Ashe brightens. “Oh it was very much like one! At least that’s how my mother told it. She said that’s where King Lambert met Queen Edwina. She was a merchant’s daughter, who wouldn’t normally be invited to the palace, but the King gifted special invitations to many of the public.”

“So I heard,” says Dimitri, looking a little embarrassed now. “While I would not mind a ball that is open to the public, I hope you will not think less of me for keeping it to a single night’s affair. A week long event sounds rather… extravagant.”

“Well of course not,” Sylvain says, “Especially since you already got—”

Byleth doesn’t catch the end of his sentence. She’s distracted by the distinct clamor of armor from the entry hall. The dining area falls silent slowly as they all turn to watch knights racing by. It isn’t until Byleth sees the distinct greens of Rhea’s and Seteth’s hair in their midst that she jumps to her feet, and chases after. She barely notices Dimitri and Dedue on her heels.

#

“Rhea, you cannot go alone,” Seteth is saying as they catch up. Whether thanks to her own presence or Dimitri’s, they have no need to push through the gathering knights at the end of the hall; the men part before them like a wave, and close ranks again once they’ve passed.

“I have a duty to protect my people, Seteth.”

“Which I understand all too well, but leaving the monastery's defenses open may be precisely what they are after.”

“And allowing them to—” Rhea pauses, noticing Byleth. “Professor, I know what you are thinking, but no. I cannot allow that.”

Byleth arches an eyebrow, looking between her and Seteth in confusion. “What I’m thinking? What’s going on?”

Rhea closes her eyes, seeming to struggle a moment with herself. “This is not your concern professor. I apologize for jumping to conclusions, but we are rather busy at the moment. I will speak with you when I return.”

“Rhea,” Seteth snaps, “I realize you dislike the students getting involved, but if you insist on doing this, take them for backup at the very least. Did you not send the Professor’s class with me to the coast for reasons such as this?”

The look Rhea casts Seteth is positively murderous, but the man doesn’t wilt. If anything, he seems more intimidating in this moment than Byleth has ever considered him to be. They stare at one another, unblinking, as the tension builds within the room.

“If someone is attacking the monastery, our class is prepared to defend it,” Dimitri breaks in. “As we have many times before. Please, allow us to fill in the ranks. There is no reason to leave resources off the table if we are all in trouble.”

Rhea turns slowly from Seteth—still unblinking—to face Dimitri. The boy pales slightly at her regard. It’s clear she is still quite unhappy with the situation; a fact which is somehow worsened by his offer, however reasonable. 

“Your offer is appreciated. And that may well be the best course. I hesitate to put students upon the walls yet again, but… I will concede that your help to defend the monastery would be useful.”

Dimitri nods shortly. “And what, precisely, are we defending against, if I may ask?” 

Before Rhea can interject, Seteth says, “We were just given word that an armed group has been seen entering the Sealed Forest. Their business there is undetermined, but we have cause to believe the group is being led by the creature known as Monica.”

Byleth’s intake of breath is sharp and quick. 

_ Monica _. 

In her mind she hears the wet, slurping noise as steel broke through mail and into her father’s back. She hears the girl’s voice, taunting him. The helplessness of, for all her power, being unable to prevent his death.

Until this moment, the idea of revenge has been a distant thing. There was no telling where in the world Monica was, or who she was, or if Byleth could ever find her again. Why bother focusing on something so abstract when there were mysteries to solve and grief to diminish. 

Here it is, now. Once again she stands in the ruined courtyard of a burned building, the Sword of the Creator warm in her hands, and her target plain before her. She wants this girl dead. Wants blood, steaming and hot, staining the grass. 

It won’t bring Jeralt back. She doesn’t care.

Dimitri’s hand on her shoulder; understanding turning his eyes a darker shade of blue. “I’m with you,” he told her, weeks ago. Good. She’s going to need im. 

Turning from him, she meets Rhea’s hard, unblinking gaze with her own. Her hands clench into trembling fists. “I’m going.”

“No,” says Rhea. “You are too valuable—”

“_ I am not asking _.”


	2. Chapter 2

The receiving hall, with it’s lofted, sound-amplifying arches, has never been this quiet. No one moves. No one hardly dares breath as the Archbishop and Byleth face off before the assembly. 

Rhea’s voice is a cool, slippery thing which reminds Byleth of a viper in the grass. “I understand your hurt, Professor. More than you can know. But I caution against this dark path you are walking. What’s more, if you continue defying me in this—”

“You’ll kill me?” Byleth scoffs. “No. Of course not. You’ll have your lap dogs try it. Though, I don’t know, maybe I warrant a blow from your own hand. It isn’t like you haven’t spilled your own blood before.”

“Byleth,” Seteth cautions.

Rhea raises a hand, warding Seteth off. Her gaze never leaves Byleth’s, but some of the anger seems to drain away. Or, perhaps, it is merely replaced by a haunting sadness. “I do not believe I know what you mean.”

It is too much effort to cover the disgust dripping from her every word, “I’m sure you don’t. Send someone with me, or I’ll go alone.”

“There’s no reason to strip the monestary’s defenses,” Dimitri says, quickly. “The Blue Lions will accompany the professor.”

“So be it,” sighs Rhea. But as the group turns to go she adds, “And Professor? When you return, we shall have a discussion concerning your future here.”

#

Everyone is quiet as they gather their gear and make for the exit. Their movements are quick and practiced so only half a candlemark has passed by the time they’re at the gates. Even so, much has changed in that time. All the walls are manned, now, with what looks to be every knight in the monastery. Students weave among them, and walk the monastery paths in pairs and groups. No one is unarmed. 

Rhea has retreated for the time being, but Seteth stands waiting for them at the gates. If he wasn’t happy about their plan before, he’s completely stone-faced when he notices Flayn among their group. Yet all he says is, “I will be watching from the walls. Have your casters send up a fireball if you are in need of assistance.”

Byleth nods. 

They might have left it at that, but an errant thought draws her to a halt just outside the gate. She turns back to him, and finds Seteth still watching her with that inscrutable gaze of his. 

“It’s in my mattress. If something happens.”

His expression is quizzical for a brief moment before clarity settles in, and he dips his head in acknowledgement. Then their group leaves with no further words of parting, no well wishes, or expressions of concern. Byleth might have been worried about that, if the anger in her veins weren’t all consuming.

Partway down the southern mountain trail, Dimitri asks, “What is in your mattress?”

“My father’s journal.”

He makes a sound of acceptance, if not understanding. She thinks that’s the end of it, and then Mercedes asks, “Professor? What did you mean about Lady Rhea spilling her own blood?”

They must have been in the audience chamber too, then. Byleth tries to remember how close the group had been—other than Dimitri and Dedue, who were at her side—then decides it doesn’t matter. The hall was designed to carry sound; everyone in that room would have heard the fight. The better question was what all she’d told her students before this. 

Not much.

“I found the journal the night before we went to the Shrine. My father kept a running log, every day. That includes his first run as Captain around the time I was born.”

“I thought he said you were born outside of the monastery,” Leonie says, puzzled.

“He lied.” Byleth still doesn’t know why Jeralt bothered. It wasn’t like he changed her name. Maybe he was just doing whatever it was Hestia and Rhea, and Flayn and Seteth were on about: trying to obscure the family ties. After all, it was common enough for peasants to name new children after their siblings who’d died before their time. 

But the more she’s forced to think about this, the more her anger wanes. She doesn’t  _ want  _ the anger to wane. She wants to feel it; to immerse herself in it. If she doesn’t—if she doesn’t she’ll drown in anxiety of what she's just done. 

_ <<Sothis?>>  _ she asks, needing the girl to comment; needing to be called a fool, a child, an idiot for burning a bridge so thoroughly.

But Sothis doesn’t say a word. Does she really need to?

To her credit, Leonie doesn’t press the subject. No one else does, either. Perhaps they’ve put two-and-two together. Or perhaps they’ve just accepted what mood Byleth’s in and decided to let the subject drop. Either way, they reach the forest’s edge in silence.

Their enemies aren’t trying for stealth. The seal strung across the archway marking the forest entrance is broken; the sign warning away intruders trampled into the mud. Heavy boot prints and claw marks have churned the path into rutted, uneven terrain hazardous to walk upon. 

“They have brought monsters, it seems,” says Flayn.

Byleth nods. 

“Lights,” she says to the casters. Annette, Flayn, Mercedes, and Sylvain each raise a single hand to light small, finger-licking flames in their palms. Their own flames won’t hurt them, but everyone else knows to keep their distance.

“Stealth?” asks Ashe.

“I’d prefer no one twisting an ankle in the dark.”

Even with a full moon hung high above, the forest is black as pitch beneath the canopy. Byleth arranges the most heavily armored among them into the front and sides, surrounding the mages and archers. They set off through the trees to the side of the road, keeping a careful eye for traps and sentries.

Barely five minutes in, arrows fly from the trees ahead of them. Dedue and Dimitri both get their shields up, covering the front line as Byleth falls back behind them. The arrows clang like hail off the metal as Ashe, Bernadette, and Ignatz automatically step back to return fire. Someone screams in the dark; a body falls from the tree. 

Another volley from above prevents the group from moving forward, but their return fire is broken by swordsmen moving in along both flanks. Chaos. With enemies appearing at all sides, it is everything Byleth can do to stay in the middle of the group barking orders as they fend off wave after wave. Through it all, the group remains in tight-knit formation. Only three men manage to break through their line, and they are cut down almost immediately by a quick slash from the Sword of the Creator. 

It is hot in her hands tonight; almost burning. 

Just as the enemy's assault slackens, and her students are allowed a breath, the ground trembles beneath their feet. 

Dimitri’s head snaps up, toward the trees where the archers fled. “What is—”

“Monster,” pronounces Dedue, climbing up from the knee he’d taken during the lull. He braces himself just as a gargantuan, lizard-like head breaks through the foliage above him. The world goes white hot as fire coagulates in it’s razor-toothed mouth. 

“Interrupt,” Byleth barks to the casters. Annette and Mercedes step forward, multicoloured patterns filling the air around them as they each weave powerful spells. The magic collides in the air in front of Dedue even as the fireball goes off. The heat rushes around them, breaking like waves before the bow of a ship. 

Bright spots dance in Byleth’s vision, but she still sees when Sylvain rushes around her. He breaks through the front line, the red-hot Lance of Ruin leaving a trail of light in its wake as it arcs through the air. The monster screams as the weapon pierces its hide. It writhes, and rears its head back for a bite.

“Again!”

She hardly needed to say it. The two mages are already weaving their spells into the air. A blast of pure kinetic energy knocks the monster’s bite aside as thunder claps and the ozone reek of lightning fills the air. 

This time it’s Byleth to rush past their defensive wall. She whips around the opposing side, the Sword of the Creator segmenting into razorblade pieces that slice rivets through the creature’s backside. It’s cry is agony and terror and unholy confusion. She  _ feels _ the moment it dies. Feels the gratitude and the grief. 

_ Oh _ . _ Oh, no. No, this isn’t a  _ monster  _ at all.  _

Tears fill her eyes as Byleth watches the unfortunate child slump to the forest floor. The blades of her sword slide once more into place, ending with a ‘click’ as they lock together that seems louder than it ought. 

She’s run up on it again; the thing she can’t admit. The reason why she felt this child’s pain. Why killing it with these weapons, in particular, is such an abomination. Why she understands, now, what it is. What they  _ all _ are.

She doesn’t know who calls her name first: Dimitri, or_ that girl_. The one she came here to kill. The one who put this poor child, which had done no wrong, into Byleth’s path. The one who used it like a weapon. The one who _made_ _it _in the first place.

Byleth turns to face the  _ true _ monster in a girl’s form that stands at the edge of their newly created clearing; wreathed in the smoke left by fire spells and a dying half-breed’s toxic blood soaking into the forest floor. 

_ Monica _ .

No. Not “Monica.” That girl, whose face this creature has stolen, is long since dead. Byleth knew that, too, on some level—didn’t she? She knew the story was too strange to be true. It’s hardly a surprise when the disguise melts away, revealing a creature that shouldn’t exist.

The creature is saying something, now. Byleth doesn’t know what. She doesn’t  _ care _ . 

She takes a step forward, then a second; a third. She is running, now; sprinting at the creature who killed her father, who turned Byleth upon her own kind like it was  _ game _ , who  _ dared _ step foot in this forest. When she is done, here, the creature will beg for its death.

Whatever this wretched creature sees upon Byleth’s face, it must be terrifying. The creature’s eyes widen. It’s sallow, purple skin pales. Without a single strike given, it turns, and it flees.

As well it should. 

#

The creature is fast. So is Byleth. She remains on its heels as they pass trees and boulders, as they leap ravines. But even she is panting when the creature breaks from the tree line onto a platform deep within the forest proper. 

Massive pillars covered in runes stand at each of the platforms four corners. A similar, smaller version exists at the precise center, like a pedestal, adorned with three tablets of a darker stone. There is a power radiating from all these points that halts Byleth in her tracks. It is inert, but if it wakes-- _ oh _ , if it wakes… 

Ahead of her, the creature trips and falls upon the stone. It rolls, panting from exertion, to stare back at her. “S-Solon? Solon where are you? You promised!”

A swirl of dark energy bursts from the air behind the pedestal. Solon steps forth, his too-small, square face seemingly split in twain by the widest grin Byleth has ever seen.

“Cease your whinging, Kronya. Your part in this play is nearly done.”

“Nearly? What are you talking about? I did all you asked!”

Behind Byleth comes a trample of feet and breaking foliage; her students are nearly here. They can’t enter--Byleth wants to warn them, but her mouth won’t move. Her head won’t turn. Her feet are glued to the platform.

It’s all she can do to braces herself for an attack as Solon extends a hand to Kronya, seemingly to help her up. She watches in mute horror while Kronya pushes herself up to take Solon’s offered hand; watches as he instead grips the creature’s throat.

With a surprising display of strength, Solon lifts the creature into the air. She struggles and gasps like a fish without water, clawing at his wrists. 

Solon’s mis-matched gaze drifts to where Byleth stands, just inside the square of stone. “You should feel honored, Kronya, giving your life for the greatest achievement our kind shall ever make.”

Her gurgle sounds almost like a question.

“Together, we are going to do what even the Goddess could not! Witness this, the Forbidden Spell!”

Even were she able, there isn’t time to react; not to what he does, nor to the truth he alone has dared speak. Just as the bushes behind her part, spilling someone into the clearing, the lines of power Byleth had sensed running through thought this place snap to life. Purple-black energy crackles in the air, weaving a web so tight and strong it takes her breath away.

Kronya, silenced by the fingers locked around her throat, struggles harder, kicking and writhing until the moment she vanishes vanishes from existence. In that same instant, Byleth feels the energy slime it’s way along her skin. There’s a sucking feeling at her very bones and then she is moving, falling, dropping down through a hole in the world itself.

The last thing she hears is Dimitri screaming her name.


	3. Chapter 3

“You idiot!” 

Sothis, the green-haired, pointed-ear girl, seethes upon her throne. Byleth stands before her, head hung and heart heavy. 

“How could you be so stupid as to lose your head like that? If you had only stopped to  _ think  _ he would not have trapped us so easily.”

“Us?” 

The question is softly spoken but pointed. Sothis’s jaw tightens, her mouth setting into a deeper scowl than ever. “I do not wish to discuss that.”

“Neither do I, but what else is there?” Byleth spreads her arms wide, indicating the darkness around them. Everything beyond the small patch of cobbled ruin, the dias and pedestal were Sothis sits, is pure void. It isn’t darkness; darkness would imply that light can exist naturally in this place. This is absence; the total nothingness from which universes are birthed. 

It’s somewhat ironic when she thinks about it.

“We can’t stay here, Sothis. We can’t exist like this. Not without going madder than we already are.”

That was to say nothing of what would happen to the others they’d left behind.

“You are not wrong about that,” Sothis agrees. Her cheeks puff with frustration. “I was not ready for this.”

“I know. Neither am I.”

“What do you care?  _ You  _ are the one who gets to stay.”

“Am I?” Byleth sighs, moving forward into her little, self-created space where Sothis exists. “I still don’t fully understand how this happened. How we got like this. I just know…”

She can’t even say it.

“That we are the same person?” Sothis hums. “We are and we are not. Not yet. That is the beauty of it, right?

“But there’s nothing for it, is there?” Sothis stands, and the throne behind her dissolves back to nothingness as she slowly steps forward. “We cannot keep me alive like this. We need the power I’m using if we want to get out of here any time soon, and  _ you  _ are the one with the body.”

Byleth nods, though she disagrees. Sothis may believe she is the one being sacrificed, but she’s wrong. Neither of them are going to live. Whatever escapes this prison will be neither of them, and both of them; the best and the worst of what each has to offer. As it should have been all along.

As it might have been, had Jeralt not taken them from the monastery.

“It is time for me to return home,” says Sothis. She holds her hands before her, palms displayed. Byleth steps toward her, hands raised in kind.

Where their flesh meets is only warmth, like touching a sun beam. It spreads from Byleth’s palms, into her hands, arms, up through her core until the light explodes from the inside out. 

And she remembers.

#

The head injury wasn’t as bad as they believed; more of a scratch than a blow. It wasn’t enough to eradicate her memories. That had been a choice, in a manner of speaking. A terrible, heartless choice she’d had to make if she wanted to save them. Or so she believed.

Byleth had always been a strange child; everyone said so. When she was very young it was because she was too quiet. As she grew, it was because she’d been too loud. Too vibrant. Too knowing in her glances. But despite all of that, she’d been loved.

The man who owned the farm where Jeralt worked, called Eddington by the adults and ‘Pappy’ by all the children, thought she was a “precocious young thing” who would make a perfect match with his eldest grandson, one day. He gave her a job caring for the chickens and sheep, and taught her to play the pan flute. 

His wife, Memaw, treated Byleth like one of those grandchildren. She always had a place set at the table for Jeralt and his girl, and never minded Byleth’s insatiable appetite. The worst she’d expressed was envy that the girl could pack away food fit for a grown man without seeming to gain a pound. 

Their pack of grandkids all lived around the area. They attended school together, and spent countless hours in the woods between chores playing at being highwaymen with the skills Jeralt taught them during his few free hours. 

It was a normal life, lived among family and friends. Things weren’t perfect, but they were happy. And she was loved.

It all changed the spring of her eleventh year. The man who led the local church died in the winter, and his replacement came with the melting of the snow. Though neither Byleth nor Jeralt attended church, they couldn’t get around the man’s sight on market days. One look at Byleth’s pale green hair and eyes had been all the confirmation he needed.

Looking back on it now, in this moment, Byleth is certain that when Jeralt saw the men from the Western Church among the brigands raising their town he assumed Rhea was to blame. Maybe he was right. Or, maybe it had to do with the schism. Either way… 

It wasn’t until a bandit ran Pappy through as he attempted to shield the youngest of the babies that Byleth found the will to unleash the power building inside her. The energy she’d been storing since the moment of her birth blossomed like a beautiful and deadly flower, unleashing it’s destruction upon every enemy within her path.

But she was still young, then. Too young for such outbursts to be sustained or to moderate her own power. The last thing she did before collapsing into the rubble was to make sure she would not be found a second time; that her presence would never endanger their family again. 

So she split herself right down the middle; Sothis to one side, Byleth to the other. Her past and her present, existing simultaneously but partitioned within their own body. One to live, the other to rest until her power was once again needed.

She hadn’t anticipated her own memory being cut away in the process, or how long it would take for her reserves to be restored. She hadn’t anticipated a great many things.

Neither had Solon.

#

Byleth opens her eyes, pale and glowing in the ceaseless void, and smiles to herself. The sword in her hands lights anew as she settles into a fighting form, takes in deep, measured breath, and pierces the fabric of reality itself.

The rift opens before her, exposing the shocked countenance of Solon-- _ Solon _ . His name tumbles around her mind and the eons of memory fighting for space within it. It’s all a little too much, a little too soon, but Byleth doesn’t believe she knows this one. Not him in particular, that is.  _ What _ he is, she knows all too well.

Byleth drops carefully from the rift she’s cut, landing easily upon the cobblestone platform as it closes in her wake. There are new enemies spilling from the forest behind Solon; soldiers of a strange army, and… 

And the twisted ones. 

She swallows thickly at the sight of the two monsters standing among the ranks, and turns her gaze back to Solon.

“No. This isn’t possible,” he mutters. Louder, with rising incredulity, he says, “How are you here? I banished you to the endless void!”

“I might ask you the same question,” she says. “I let your kind live the last time. I’d hoped you might learn a lesson. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

“What are,” Solon gasps. It’s all he can say before his head rolls from his shoulders, and over the cobblestone. His body slumps more slowly, the stump of his neck hitting the ground at her feet with a meaty, wet splat. 

The blades of Byleth’s sword click back into place. She holds it at her side, letting the blood drip onto the stone, as she surveys the line of enemy soldiers.

The rage she felt coming out here has ebbed somewhat; tempered by bloodletting and the cold, unyielding truth of what she is, and what all this means. It’s her fault, that everything has come to this. She let them live. She let them go. 

But how—?

Footsteps sound behind her, followed by Dimitri’s quiet voice. “Professor? What happened? Are you alright?”

No. 

“I’m fine. Form up but stay behind me.” 

Then she raises her voice, making sure all the gathered can hear her. While she does not intend to make the same mistake, none among those present are her true enemies. They might yet be saved. 

“You have a choice to make, all of you. Whatever your masters have told you, I promise that you are being deceived. Lay down your weapons. Give yourselves willingly to the grace of the Goddess and you shall be shown mercy.”

Perhaps it should have been laughable, this tiny girl speaking as though she has any authority, backed only by a handful of students against a squadron with leashed monsters upon their side. 

No one is laughing. In these people’s eyes she sees many emotions--confusion, disgust, terror, hope--none of them amusement. No one wants to be here. Neither do they dare turn on their masters. There must be some way to convince them.

Byleth’s gaze falls again to the poor, twisted creatures shackled to the Shadow’s beck and call. There it is again, her rage. Its embers are burning a hole inside her, chipping away thoughts of what is or isn’t possible. These children, these twisted ones, they have no right to exist--but they do. They are here, now, and they should be  _ hers _ . For all the blood in their veins has been corrupted, she knows it’s source as surely as she knows the sky and the earth beneath her feet. 

The Sword of the Creator falls to the ground as she beckons to them with both hands, as though offering them her embrace; pleading,  _ calling _ to the blood within their veins.

And they come. 

Slowly, at first. Slowly enough to fool their handlers into believing they might attack before the first one turns and bites the man who holds its leash; bites him clear in half. His entrails drag along the ground as the creature they call “monster” plods across the clearing towards the woman who should have been its mother. 

“Byleth,” Dimitri says as the monsters move past their handlers, lumbering slowly toward the group. She shushes him in an eerie parody of Rhea shushing Seteth only a few hours before. 

Her hands begin to shake as the second one escapes its bonds. This time, the handler is quick to drop the leash, backing away before those teeth can be turned upon him. No one else moves to intercede. 

Though the edges of Byleth’s vision are turning black, she maintains her hold on both of them. If she fails now, everything will descend into violence. More violence than is already going to be necessary, that is. 

The so-called monsters stare ponderously at her as they ease closer; their reptilian eyes larger than her own head and just as piercing. Her students gasp behind her as first one, then the other lower themselves to the ground and rest their heads at her feet.

She places her shaking hands upon their smooth noses, feeling the softness of their skin, the chill of their bodies. They aren’t even being properly kept, these poor, sad creatures. 

Though it breaks her heart, there is nothing she can do for them now. Whatever she once was, her powers do have limits within this form. She spent so much energy breaking herself free of that would-be prison that there is only one course of action left; only one thing which will end their suffering.

At the very least, it will be less cruel that what she did to their sibling just a short while ago. What she has done to others of their kind already, uncomprehending of the horror she’d been inflicting upon them and herself.

Byleth looks once more to the mesmerized foreign army. Many  _ have  _ dropped their weapons though out of surrender or shock, it is unclear. Either way, she senses only one uniting force left among them: fear.

“I am sorry,” she says to the children. 

The last wisps of her remaining energy gather in each of her palms. The monsters close their eyes, going peaceful and still, before her power blasts through their bodies, scouring the corruption of her blood from their veins, and ending their mutilated lives. 

She remains on her feet long enough to see the enemy soldiers break and run, disappearing into the forest as quickly as they’d come. And then, once more, she is falling. This time, it is into darkness of her own creation surrounded by scorched stone and the crisp, mythril corpses of the men who had been monsters.


	4. Chapter 4

The memory is fuzzy; more kin to a dream than any reality. She’s lying in a bed, eyes barely open, as a green-haired woman falls to her knees beside her. 

_ Seiros _, she thinks, but she lacks the energy to say. No, that isn’t right. There is something wrong with her body. Something incomplete, preventing her from forming words or moving her mouth. How curious.

Tears stream unchecked down Seiros’ face, etching through smears of a darker substance brushed along her cheeks and nose as though it’s been swiped across her face. When Seiros reaches forward, she can see the woman’s hands are also coated in this same substance. As is the front of her dress, and the bed, and the sheets. Curious indeed.

“Do you see her?” Seiros asks, her voice a husky shell of its usual self. She guides someone's hands around the girl who cannot speak, as though forcing them to hold her. “Do you see her, my Hes? I saved her. I saved her for you.”

The person, who remains out of sight, does not respond. Their hands do not move of their own accord. The girl, trapped in her voiceless prison, is not certain this person is breathing at all. 

“Do you see,” gasps Seiros as she struggles to fold the unknown person’s fingers between her own. It is more difficult than it should be, given how stiff they are in death. A sob rips from Seiros’ throat as she leans forward, pressing the cold, lifeless fingers to her forehead. “Hes? What have I done? Mother, what have I done?”

#

The first time she wakes the world is dark but for a fire crackling cheerily in a nearby hearth. Sitting up is a struggle, but Byleth forces her way past the tendrils of exhaustion attempting to keep her prone. She has things to do; dragons to scold; students to reassure; enemies to hunt.

Once upright, however, the girl reels beneath a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea. She slaps a hand to the mattress, fighting to sit up straight. 

“Byleth?” 

Her vision doubles—triples—the amount of Rheas sitting at the fire with embroidery hoops on their laps. The sight is so strange and disorienting, Byleth simply says “Seiros” by way of greeting before the nausea comes on too strong. She vomits across the bed.

A short time and quite a lot of fuss later, Byleth finds herself back in bed, cleaned up, with a warm towel over her eyes. She’s too tired to be embarrassed, not even when she realized she’s been nude this entire time. What’s more, her head is throbbing fit to murder someone; probably herself. She can’t figure out why. Was she in a battle? She thinks so, but when she tries to recall—

A thousand battlefields. Some are barren, others recent farmland; city streets; docks; forest; caves; beach. A thousand more faces; more deaths; the overwhelming reek of entrails and shit; blood churning the soil to mud. 

Byleth moans, pressing the heels of her hands over her eyes, and rolls onto her side. 

Someone is touching her. Probably Seiros, she thinks, but it could be—it could be—again, a storm of faces. Some are parental, some are children, some are lovers. They are all dead. She’s confident they are all dead. It still sounds like nonsense. How could they die if she loved them? Nothing she loves can _ die _. It’s absurd! Unthinkable!

But they have. So much of what she loves is dead.

It’s too much. That was always going to be the problem, wasn’t it? It was always going to be too much, with this frail, mortal body and its inherent limitations. Perhaps she will alter that one day, when she has amassed enough power. But that could take decades, perhaps even a millenia. Assuming she can avoid yet another set back, which doesn’t seem reasonable. 

There are enemies at the gates. Of that much, she is certain. Enemies at the gates, and choices to be made. 

It isn’t a good choice. It is better than her last. 

Between pained breaths, she gathers the ragged vestige of power she’s managed to regain, and she shoves every memory, every bit of knowledge that isn’t recent—everything which doesn’t already belong to Byleth—back, back, _ back _ behind a wall to be accessed later, when she has the capacity to understand. When attempting to sort it out won’t leave her a useless wreck. 

When it is done, and the wall is sealed, Byleth lets out a sob of relief. The pain ebbs. Exhaustion reasserts itself and once again she returns to sleep.

#

The second time Byleth wakes, it is to golden, glittering light streaming through a tall window. It isn’t her window, and the light… Sunset or dawn? Hard to tell. 

Briefly, the idea of getting up crosses Byleth’s mind and is summarily dismissed. Exhaustion still saps at her very soul, gluing her to the soft bed even as she wonders whose bed it is. Not hers. This isn’t even her room. Yet, it is familiar, is it not? She has been here before; in this room; in this bed; at this precise angle, in fact.

Confusion settles in and she squeezes her eyes closed, trying to think. She remembers the fight in the sealed forest. Solon trapping her…

That must have been his plan all along, she realizes. He meant to lure her to that pedestal, using Monica as bait, before sealing her away. 

Or maybe… Maybe not her? Rhea could have been his target. She would not have been able to get free of that place. For all her considerable power, Rhea isn’t Byleth. And Byleth is—

Byleth is—

“What is all of this?” 

Seteth; practically spitting the question from somewhere beyond her sight. This argument has been going on a while, Byleth thinks. It may be what woke her up. 

The effort it takes to turn her head toward the sound is monumentous, but she manages. There is a door on the far side of the room, cracked slightly ajar. 

“Seteth—”

“Do not ‘Seteth,’ me. I am neither a fool, nor a child, nor your _ servant _to be led about by the nose. There is something deeply amiss, here, and I am tired of having my concerns brushed aside. You told me Hestia is in the tomb, sleeping. You told Jeralt she died in childbirth. Which is true?”

The response is too soft for Byleth to hear, but Seteth hisses. Whatever it was, he didn’t care for the answer.

“Is that even possible?”

Rhea’s voice turns sharp, “Apparently.” 

The conversation continues briefly, voices muffled and sharp, moving about a larger area. Byleth wishes she could force herself to move. She wants to be closer; to hear the words being kept from her. It’s all she can do just to stay awake.

“Because I thought you had given up this foolishness,” shouts Seteth, jarring Byleth from a half-doze she hadn’t meant to fall into. 

“I _ did _.” Rhea’s voice is strained, now. It takes Byleth a moment to understand why; the Archbishop is on the verge of tears. She’s heard her sound like that before, once. The day… The day… 

Seteth scoffs, and Rhea says again, “I _ swear _ . I gave up. Hestia would be the last, I promised you _ and _myself. If she did not bond with—it was supposed to end with her.”

Another comment Byleth can’t make out, then, “She begged. She could not accept that her baby would die, and she _ begged _ me.”

“And you couldn’t tell her no?”

Anger and grief sizzle in Rhea’s words; tearing through the air like shrapnel. “Would you have told Caduceus ‘no’? Or Cethleann? If it was _ her _ , lying bloody and broken before you, with your dead grandchild in your arms, would you have _ told her no _ when she begged you to save her baby? When you knew, you both knew, that you had the means?” 

“You cannot bring back the dead. You are _ not _ our Mother.” 

Rhea’s voice grows louder, and something scratches against the door. Byleth closes her eyes as it swings open. 

“But I _ did _. The proof is there. Right there! She is alive because her mother is not.” A sob, wretched and broken. “Please, brother. You have to understand. You are the only one left who understands.”

Quiet again, though they haven’t moved. There’s a quiet sound, like muffled crying, and Seteth’s voice crooning a gentle, consolatory note. 

Though his next words are hushed, Byleth can hear them with the door open and them so close. “I do understand. But she does not. You have to talk to her. She must be brought into the fold. Properly, this time.”

“_ You _ talk to her. She hates me. The way she looks at me… She’s terrified. She probably thinks I’m a monster.” A pause, before Rhea adds, “Perhaps she is not wrong.”

“We are not monsters. None of us. No matter what labels they have thrown upon our kind. As for the girl, can you blame her for being hesitant? You lied to her father when she was an infant, and you have lied to them both ever since they returned.”

“And what was I to tell them? I regret keeping Jeralt in the dark. We should have told him before he and Hestia—but that’s long past.”

“It is.” He sighs. “We cannot change our past, but we _ can _look to our future. Though if we have begun keeping this many secrets from our own, I fear we may not have much of one.”

“Your point has been made, brother.”

“I pray it has.” There’s a sound of shuffling feet, steps leading away, and then Seteth’s somewhat more distant voice, “I can fend off her students for another day, but their concern grows by the hour. We must tell them something.”

“If she does not wake by tomorrow afternoon, I will prepare a statement,” Rhea sighs. “And we may well consider allowing Dimitri to see her, at the least. After that scene in the hall it is a wonder they have not accused us of having her murdered.”

“The Royals may not be far from it,” Seteth says dryly. “Our girl has all three under her spell, it seems.”

Rhea’s laugh is small and wet with sorrow, but genuine all the same. “As well she should.”

Seteth’s steps continue their retreat, fading into the distance. A moment later there is a soft click as the door closes again, followed by lighter, slippered footsteps approaching the bed.

The mattress sinks beside her, and gentle, chilled fingers touch Byleth’s forehead, brushing her hair away. Her eyes flutter of their own accord, but remain closed. 

“Are you dreaming, dear one?” Rhea asks softly. “I hope they are good dreams. I fear we will need you to wake soon, however. You cannot afford a long slumber; not now. But we can wait just a little longer.”

Byleth feels as thought she should respond; she should have questions or concerns about everything she’s heard. But speech is an impossibility, particularly when Rhea begins to hum, and then to sing, a terribly familiar lullaby.

_ “Deep in the meadow, under the willow _ _   
_ _ A bed of grass, a soft green pillow…” _

#

The third time she wakes is better. Byleth spends a candlemark simply lying in bed, returning slowly to her senses. She’s still in the room that’s become almost familiar over… however long it’s been. Once again there is light peeking through the window, but it is soft and pale like an overcast sky. 

She rolls over, examining first one side of the room and then the other. There’s the usual bedroom furniture, a fireplace, a chair in front of it, and a few pretty rugs upon the floor. She still does not know this place. The stone of the walls looks like the monastery, though. Dim, hazy memories of her previous attempts at waking supply that Rhea—Seiros?—has been in here with her. Seiros and Seteth.

Mm. That doesn’t sound right.

With care, particularly given a vague notion of how this ended the last time she tried it, Byleth levers herself into a sitting position inch by painstaking inch. She remains a little dizzy and tired, like she’s had a terrible flu, but her stomach is settled. That feels like an improvement.

Even with a small fire left burning, the winter chill is strong as she slides her feet over the edge of the mattress. Thankfully, there is a rug upon the floor; something to set her feet to besides frigid floorboards. 

Cautiously, Byleth stands. A few wobbling steps carry her to a dresser with a mirror set above, where her naked, green-haired, green-eyed reflection stares back at her; wide-eyed and alarmed. 

In her heart, Byleth knows this is merely a return to form, not an alteration. The effect remains jarring.

There was only one mirror in her youngest years, but Memaw let Byleth use it often enough that she had some awareness of what she looked like, then. Sothis. She had looked like Sothis, with paler hair, rounded ears, and far less extravagant clothes. Was that genetics, or had she done that to herself? Molded her body subconsciously to resemble the form she’d once prefered… 

If that was true, she would have saturated her hair colour. It was the blood, then, breeding into a parody of itself. A suspiciously coincidental conclusion. Of course, life tends to have more coincidences that many people are willing to accept.

Either way, here she stands; inhabiting a full grown, humanized parody of the body she once possessed. And it looks strange. She’d grown used to the darker hair and blue eyes; Hestia’s colours. Her transitional self had looked far more like her earthly mother than she does now… and it must have broken Jeralt’s heart all the more.

Shaking her head to clear the morbid thoughts, Byleth turns from the mirror to search for her clothing. Though she’s never had much problem with nudity, she doesn’t feel comfortable leaving the room without something to cover herself. What if her students saw? 

They _ will _ see her proper colouring—have already seen it, she realizes with muted horror—that is bad enough.

Her things are nowhere to be found. A fact which disturbs her less for the missing smallclothes or coat than it does the sword. She’d had it on her when she fell. The students wouldn’t have left it in the woods. 

She tamps down a spike of terror. For all that Byleth’s waking memories of the past few days are confused and suspect, she feels certain she would remember if any of her students had been transformed or wounded by the Sword of the Creator. Besides, it wasn’t likely to have happened. Most of her students had crests. They were safe to touch it, so long as they had a crest.

There is time to figure out where Rhea has hidden it. Byleth takes a deep breath, then a second, and her pulse returns to a normal, steady beat.

The wardrobe is filled with Rhea’s clothing, confirming to whom this room belongs. Byleth would sooner jump naked into an ice-choked river than borrow anything from Rhea. 

Still. The woman left her in the bed without any other options, so the bed _ sheets _must be fair game. It’s better than sitting around in the buff, anyway.

It takes a considerable effort to pull the tangled, silken sheets apart from the downy comforter. By the end, Byleth is ready to sit down and take a nap, and her hair stands half on-end from static discharge. Instead, she winds the cloth around herself in an awkward sort of robe. Another look around doesn’t generate anything to tie the ‘garment’ with, so she holds it together by hand as she steps from the bedroom into a small, well-appointed sitting room. 

Bookcases line the walls, saving space for two doors on opposing walls, and a fireplace on a third. No windows in this room, but two brass oil-lamps are fixed to either side of a desk piled high with missives, books, quills and ink-pots. A velvet upholstered couch sits backed against the business side of the desk, facing the fireplace. What really draws Byleth’s eye, however, is the portrait hung above the mantle. 

It’s difficult to tell when it was painted. The clothing styles are distinctly old-fashioned, though Byleth has never had a good eye for such things. They could be twenty years out of date, or fifty. 

In the middle is Rhea, seated upon the throne of the archbishop, looking as pristine as always. To her right stands Jeralt, exactly as Byleth remembers him except happy. To their left is a short, slight woman with a cherub face, dark grey-green hair, blue eyes, and a knowing smirk; Hestia.

Directly between them, behind Rhea’s throne, is someone Byleth has never met, nor does he invoke any sense of nostalgia. This man has green hair, yes, so dark it could be black, but his eyes are a striking blue, and his jawline is chiseled and square in a way not common amongst the Goddess’ descendants. Based on looks alone, she would guess he’s more “hers” than Jeralt was but not by much.

It isn’t difficult to draw the obvious conclusion: this man and Rhea begat Hestia. Hestia and Jeralt begat Byleth. Still, she doesn’t feel comfortable making assumptions at this point. 

Shaking her head, Byleth moves on through to the opposing doorway and out into an empty hallway. A pause at a nearby window quickly reveals her location on the top floor of the monastery; a place that’s thus far been off limits. It also confirms the overcast sky, and a light drift of snow falling from the heavens. 

With the ground to help orient her, she realizes the wide doors down the hall lead onto Rhea’s private balcony. That means the stairwell would be… that way. Though she’s tempted to try the balcony in hopes of finding Rhea somewhere away from prying ears, walking directly out into snow seems a poor choice. Particularly when her feet are already frozen. 

Heedless of her half-dressed state, Byleth trudges slowly down the winding stairs to the second floor, quite unsure of the welcome she will find.

#

The guards outside the audience chamber go rigid at Byleth’s appearance. One gives a hesitant “Uhm…” but neither attempt to stop her from walking past them into the packed chamber. 

Where have all these people come? What are they doing?

The uniforms in front of her are primarily from the Officer’s Academy, with clusters of monks and nuns scattered throughout. She recognizes many of the students, though none of them have realized she’s standing behind them. Over the din of the crowd’s whispering, she can hear what sounds like Rhea, Seteth and… Edelgard? Dimitri. Claude. 

Distantly she recalls Seteth saying something about the “Royals” and herself. Byleth frowns. It’s difficult to distinguish between dream and reality, particularly with the mental barrier she erected between herself and the millenia’s worth of knowledge belonging to Sothis. 

Was that real? Yes. ..._ and _ no. Byleth considers this as the crowd slowly becomes aware of her presence. 

The wall is just as tangible to her as the shade of Sothis had been, before they rejoined. As real as the mask had been, too. She could break it if she wanted, but that would be foolish. 

The only reason she’d been functional as long as she had without it was that she’d been unconscious for the most part. During her short period of actual consciousness, she’d been focused on the moment at hand. Once she’d been left to her own devices, however, any basic attempt at recollection was met with an onslaught of information built up over thousands of years. Too much for a human—or, _ mostly _human—mind to work with. 

So what was left? 

Her intention had been to leave Byleth completely intact; a more refined version of what she’d done to her younger self all those years ago. It’s a bit insane to continue distinguishing between “Byleth” and “Sothis,” she feels, but without full access to all of Sothis’ knowledge and memories the distinction seems apt. 

But there are bits left over; gleanings of realizations she’d had before she’d shut the rest away. She understands who and what she is; not how she came to exist this way. She knows that something terrible has happened, something which locked her away from her home and children. And she knows—she _ suspects _—how far removed those children are now from the people they had been when she was their mother.

The better question, Byleth decides as the crowd parts before her to reveal the five people at its center, is what does _ Rhea _know? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Eyes the chapter count* Yeaaah, we're doing this again.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Byleth slips a touch backward as she grapples with the reality of what she is versus what others can be expected to handle.

“Professor! You’re awake,” says Dimitri.

“You’re alive,” gasps Edelgard.

“Uh, was that a real question? I thought we were being hyperbolic,” asks Claude, casting an odd look at the Princess beside him. Edelgard’s icy glance is all the answer anyone needs. 

“Not that I’m complaining, but what’s with the bedsheet?” asks Sylvain, from the crowd. This is immediately followed by, “Ow! What was that for?”

“She’s been sick for a week and _ that’s _the first thing you say to her,” Ingrid scolds.

“I could not find my clothes,” Byleth says, nearly flinching from the flatness to her own voice. In it, she hears the ghost of the broken girl who woke in ashes. 

“We took them for cleaning,” Rhea explains, “I am so sorry, they must have been returned to your room. I’ll have someone fetch them.” 

“I got it!” Cyril rushes from the room before anyone else can move.

“Professor,” Edelgard breaks in, taking a step away from the line of Royals and towards Byleth herself. This also places her conveniently between Byleth and Rhea. “I apologize for the fuss. It was, perhaps, a touch overzealous. We have all been quite worried about your sudden disappearance after what happened in the Sealed Forest.”

“Not to mention…” Felix trails off, his mouth set in a flat, distrustful line. There’s no need for him to finish the sentence; Byleth knows he means her transformation.

“How are you feeling?” Dimitri moves around Edelgard to Byleth’s side. “You gave us quite the scare out there.”

Byleth searches his face, attempting to discern the impossible. Not even she can read minds, though she’s always been quite adept at reading emotions. How _ much _did her students relay of the confrontation in the forest? They had to have told the others something, to generate a response like this, but not necessarily everything.

“Tired,” she says, glancing back at Rhea. “But it is getting better. I apologize for worrying you.”

“Well.” Seteth clasps hands together once, drawing the attention of the crowd back to himself. “Now that you have all seen the Professor alive and aware, perhaps we can put some of this behind us and return our attention to the graduation ceremony.”

Overtop him, Rhea says, “Yes, I believe that would be best. There is not much time left, after all. I am sure everyone still has preparations to make, and you would prefer if the Professor is well enough to attend, would you not?”

The rest of the students begin to back slowly away, exiting the room by twos and threes. Only the Blue Lions, Hubert, and the three Royals hold fast. 

Byleth looks between them all before focusing upon Rhea and Seteth. “Your Grace, I do not mean to be presumptuous, but if you would give me a moment here, perhaps after we could have that discussion you mentioned?”

Rhea’s head tilts slightly to one side. She seems momentarily nonplussed before dipping her head once in assent. “If you feel up to it, I would appreciate that. Of course, the audience hall is not fit for a long discussion, and I do worry that the climb to the third floor may be far more taxing upon you than a descent.”

“My office stands available,” Seteth offers.

Byleth nods, and Rhea says, “We are agreed, then. I will await you there.” 

As the elder—the elder— what was that word? Byleth watches Rhea and Seteth make their exit, frowning as she tries to recall. The knowledge is there, she knows it, locked behind the wall of Sothis’ memories. It wasn’t part of what she’d already discovered for herself, so she hadn’t kept it. 

But there _ was _a word for them. Not ‘human,’ not ‘monster’... Nnn… 

“Byleth?” Leonie’s voice draws her attention back to the students still waiting on her attention. They do look worried. More than that, she realizes with a heavy heart, the Blue Lions in particular look _ scared _. 

They are scared of _ her _.

_ “She thinks I’m a monster,” _Rhea’s voice whispers in the back of Byleth’s mind.

“Sorry,” she says. “How long have I been out?”

“A week,” Ingrid says—no, she repeats. She already scolded Sylvain along those lines, hadn’t she? “You passed out after…”

“Dropping through a portal, apparently?” Claude scratches the back of his neck. “I have to say, the whole story they came back with sounds wild. I wouldn’t believe any of it, if it weren’t for…”

He hesitates, making a gesture that encompasses Byleth’s entire form. “All this.”

“Solon banished me to the Darkness.” 

Uncomprehending stares.

Sylvain makes a face. “See, you say that like it’s a _ place _ but…”

“Solon _ told us _ it was a place. A place of endless shadow,” says Ignatz, “Somewhere outside of time itself. I thought perhaps he was being metaphorical. He was raving, after all.”

Edelgard cuts him a sharp look. “He spoke with you all?”

“‘Spoke’ is a strong word,” says Dimitri. “As Ignatz put it, he sounded quite a bit mad. But I witnessed it myself. It was like the shadows themselves came to life, swallowing you whole. And I—I was _ powerless _to—”

He cuts himself off, one fist curled and shaking as he glowers at a distant point in the ether. Behind him, Felix eyes Dimitri warily.

“Afterward, he began rambling about using ‘the Forbidden Spell,’” says Ingrid, picking up the thread where Dimitri left off. “And some other nonsense about taking back what was theirs, and that not even ‘The Fell Star’ could stop them now.”

“Gloating fool,” Edelgard mutters.

“He wasn’t making a lot of sense,” Ashe agrees, “We were trying to figure out what to do when you—uhm. Did whatever it was you did.”

“Opened a door,” Byleth supplies.

“Right,” drawls Claude, “And how did you manage that, teach?”

Byleth touches her hair where it spills over one shoulder, absently winding the mint-green locks around one finger. “The Goddess…”

The Goddess—_ what _? 

Byleth swallows against the sudden sorrow and bile bubbling up her throat. She doesn’t want to go back to keeping secrets, but what would telling the truth about this accomplish? The students like her. They trust her—her Lions do, anyway. Hubert, Claude, and Edelgard are somewhat unknown.

But there’s trusting someone, and then there’s being willing to accept that they are the mortal incarnation of your personal deity. Worse yet, for several among them it was more kin to the mortal incarnation of a deity you don’t believe exists in the first place. What good would it do anyone to have them—understandably—questioning her sanity? Even with everything they’ve seen and been through together, there is a certain amount of incredulity one has to expect when a broken girl claims to be the Goddess reborn. 

And yet, she had promised herself there would be no more lies, had she not?

Byleth searches frantically for some way to explain that is neither truth nor fabrication, and then, finally, her gaze falls upon Flayn. Flayn, who is just as slippery as her father at dancing around the things she cannot, or will not, say. 

Flayn, who is studying Byleth’s face intently, with eyes that beg her to lie. 

“I believe the Goddess helped me,” Byleth says, sounding far more like herself in this moment than she has since she woke up. At least that much is right. “At least, that’s the only way I know how to explain it.”

#

Byleth’s proclamation was met with a mix of acceptance, bewilderment, and confusion. No outright hostility, however, which was a relief. The worst reaction came, rather predictably, from Hubert who simply stared at Byleth as though he knew she was lying and found it rather amusing. She was fairly certain that was merely an attempt to unsettle her, but she couldn’t help the chill crawling down her back.

Cyril returned with Byleth’s clothes, then. She excused herself on the pretense of needing to change and speak with the Archbishop, and with a multitude of promises not to worry them like this in the future. Then she borrowed her father’s old office--still unassigned--to swap the bedsheet for proper clothing. 

Her movements were no faster for having been awake the better part of an hour. If anything, Byleth is feeling slower and clumsier than ever by the time she wobbles across the hall to Seteth’s office with the folded bed sheet in hand.

The room’s occupants look up when she lets herself in; Seteth seeming nonplussed and Rhea slightly annoyed. Perhaps she should have knocked.

They both relax when they see it’s only her, and further still when she closes the door behind herself. Byleth takes two steps toward the extra chair across from Seteth’s desk when her eye catches a glint of something off on the wall. She stops. 

The Spear of Assal still holds its place of honor upon Seteth’s wall. Again, there isn’t anything particularly drawing about the piece, if you discount the way firelight plays across the polished… material of dubious origin. No, there’s nothing drawing about it at all and yet, looking directly at the thing, Byleth shudders from her toes to the roots of her hair. 

She shakes herself a second time, forcing her gaze away as she settles unbidden amongst the remaining members of her family. That’s what they are, right? Family.

Assal… 

“We heard what happened from Dimitri and the other students,” Rhea says when the silence has gone on too long, “Perhaps you could give us a more complete account?”

“Is that where you want to begin this?” 

Rhea’s jaw tightens. She might have seemed contrite in the audience hall--and perhaps she still was--but it's clear she isn’t used to being spoken to this way and does not care for it. “I suppose we could jump right to your outburst before you left.”

“Rhea,” sighs Seteth. 

“I thought we might start by clearing up a few matters more important than a minor squabble,” Byleth replies, trying to keep her voice even. “For instance, I do _ not _believe you are a monster.”

Rhea goes so still she may have ceased breathing. Even if it’s true, simple lack of oxygen _ probably _wouldn’t kill Rhea so Byleth waits instead of rushing to check on her. 

As they wait, Seteth asks carefully, “You heard that?”

“You were shouting.” 

Rhea closes her eyes, putting a thumb against her cheekbone as she rubs her fingers between her eyebrows. 

“So we were,” Seteth agrees. “I apologize that we woke you.” 

He glances at Rhea, then lifts one hand and draws a complicated pattern in the air. White light follows his fingertips, spiraling into a spell Byleth doesn’t recognize. It pulses through the room like a beacon, and fades just as quickly. At Byleth’s questioning look, he says, “A silencing spell to prevent anyone from eavesdropping upon our conversation. Now, perhaps you will tell us what you know, and we will fill in the pieces from there?”

She wants to argue; to say, instead, that they should begin at the beginning and tell her everything _ they _know. However, even though she’s no longer afraid of them, she hesitates to push Rhea that far. The woman already looks haggard, here in the firelight away from non-familial eyes. Someone has to give an inch if they’re going to get anywhere, and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be Byleth. 

That being said…

While they would almost certainly believe the truth, Byleth doesn’t know if she should tell them. Seteth, perhaps, but Rhea… Though she’d begun to feel a little sorry for the woman, who was clearly quite distraught over the entire ordeal, Byleth still doesn’t know what Rhea has done or what she intended in the doing.

There’s giving an inch, and then there’s being foolish.

“I’m not sure where to start,” Byleth says after another moment. “With what I know of Hestia and Dad? With what happened in the Sealed Forest? My… transformation?”

“I’m most curious about the latter,” Seteth admits, “But perhaps we should begin with how far you got in this.”

He takes Jeralt’s journal from his desk and hands it to her. Byleth smooths a hand over the leather cover as she accepts the book, and holds it to her chest. The familiar weight of it, and the connection it represents, bolsters her nerve. “Not far. I started with the entries around my birth--Dad marked that section for me--and read through his discussion with Rhea. The one about Hestia being her… _ your _daughter.”

She glances at Rhea, whose eyes are still closed. The woman nods. Byleth thinks that will be all, but then Rhea slowly adds, “I was not certain if he had told you, at first, and he seemed… reluctant to be here. When you said later that he had never mentioned me to you at all, I believed the truth would only confuse matters more. And that we would have time to delve into it later, when you were ready.”

Once, that would have been a confusingly vague statement. Now, though, only one thing really surprised Byleth, “You knew he didn’t want to be here?”

“I am not blind. I had hoped, once you had both been here for a while, he might see that I never meant you any harm. That he might learn to trust me again. Those last couple months I had believed we were making progress.”

“You weren’t wrong,” Byleth says softly. “He said something of the kind after the Massacre of Remire Village. That maybe he’d been wrong to take me away.”

“Did he?” Rhea’s eyes open just enough to glance at Seteth for confirmation. He nods. 

“Jeralt wrote something to that effect, as well.”

Puzzled, Byleth turns to Rhea, “You didn’t read the journal?”

“I wanted to,” she said, “But Seteth pointed out that you had not given me permission, and it would be better to wait and ask.”

“I see.” Byleth’s hold tightens involuntarily around the journal. An expectant silence falls. Though she knows what they’re both waiting to hear, Byleth can’t quite force herself to either give permission or deny Rhea the opportunity. Not yet. Not when she hasn’t finished it herself. 

Seteth prompts her, “So you read that Rhea is your grandmother. What did you think of that?”

“I was confused. I couldn’t understand how it could be possible when you look younger than my own father. But that wasn’t the whole of it.”

“What else?” asks Rhea, seeming to recover more from her earlier… shock? Grief?

“Details about my infancy. He wrote about my lack of crying, and expression. And about the nun who disappeared after telling him I was stillborn.” Byleth hesitates. “She isn’t--you didn’t kill her, did you?”

Rhea’s mouth settles in a thin line, like she wants to demand who Byleth thinks she is to ask such a question. Instead, Rhea says with crisp precision, “I wish I had. But no. She asked to leave, and I allowed it, thinking no one would believe such a story. I found out later that she joined the Western Church.”

A sudden, awful suspicion settles within Byleth. “That’s why...”

“They are rebelling? Not precisely, but she added fuel to their fire.” Rhea shakes her head. “By the time I realized where she had gone and what rumors she was spreading, you were already gone. Those who had seen you could attest only that you were a living child, so far as they knew, but that you had died a tragic death some time later.”

“So it was better I wasn’t here.”

“Not necessarily. If you had been, they would have seen only a healthy baby girl.” Rhea scoffs lightly. “Though I could have as easily passed you off as a miracle from the Goddess herself. In a sense, that is entirely true.”

About to ask a completely different question, Byleth pauses with her mouth open, her brain skittering to a halt at the idea of Rhea passing her off as a _ miracle _. The woman was right, in a twisted sort of sense. But that gives her the perfect lead in for a more pressing question. One that Byleth needs to ask, although a creeping suspicion has already begun to root in her mind. Something Seteth had said during their overheard argument was striking a very strange bell indeed. 

Still, there remained a piece of the puzzle missing. Though Byleth could sense the shape of it, the hole was yet unfilled.

“How _ did _ you do it?”

“How did I do what?”

“How did you revive me? You said it yourself: I was _ dead _.”

To Byleth’s horror, Rhea actually squirms at that question. She’s seen the Archbishop calm, furious, and she’s heard her upset. But she’s never seen the woman look so deeply, terribly uncomfortable. 

“There are… _ artifacts _of sorts, related to the crests. ‘Crest Stones,’ we call them. I--well, it was more of a gamble, truly, but Hestia and I both believed the Crest Stone of Flames would be enough to bring you back to us.”

“Because it matched my crest?”

“Not… precisely.”

She and Seteth exchange a look of deep understanding that pinkens Byleth’s cheeks with frustration. “_ What _?”

Seteth is the one to speak, cutting off Rhea when the woman looks ready to snap at Byleth’s tone. “Byleth, we will explain, but the situation is rather complicated, and there are a lot of things we should probably explain in a more linear order--”

“Like what? The fact that _ she _is Seiros? I already know that part.”

“How did you come to that conclusion?”

“Would you believe me if I said Sothis told me?”

Rhea’s voice is wondrous and soft, and when Byleth turns to her the woman’s gaze is so _ hopeful _ her chest tightens at the sight. “She spoke to you?”

Byleth swallows. Lies, again. But maybe they don’t have to be complete lies. “Sometimes. I started hearing her shortly before we arrived here.”

Seteth sits back in his seat. His expression is harder to read than his sister’s, but Byleth thinks he believes. “_ Hearing _ her. So she’s spoken more than once?”

She nods shortly. “She didn’t tell me who Rhea was until the Sealed Forest, but I was starting to suspect, anyway. It made too much sense.”

“What else has she told you?” Rhea asks.

Byleth considers a moment how to answer that without giving herself away. It won’t be easy, not without stretching the truth a little too far. But the way Rhea is watching her gives her an idea. 

“You don’t seem that surprised.”

“Did you expect us not to believe you?”

“It sounds pretty questionable to me, and I’m the one who lived with it.”

“It is a fair question, Rhea,” Seteth puts in.

Rhea takes a deep breath. “As you say. No, I am not entirely surprised. Your mother could hear Sothis, too. Not often, and only in the Holy Tomb.”

The wall in Byleth’s mind trembles as temptation hits her. If that was true, then she would have knowledge of those times, would she not? Should she tear that wall back down again she might be able to sift through the memories and find Hestia, and whatever had said to her back then. She might be able to know something of the woman who was lost…

But Byleth had locked that all away for a reason, had she not? She’d already attempted sorting out memories from that pile--ones that had occurred only a few days before, no less--and been knocked on her ass for the effort. It wasn’t worth risking another coma-like “nap” just to meet a dead woman.

“The Holy Tomb?”

“That is another long explanation, I am afraid,” says Seteth, “And part of the greater whole.”

“Okay. So why could my--why could Hestia hear Sothis? And why only there?”

“I am not certain why it was only in that location,” says Rhea, “But as the former, well… Let us backtrack to the beginning. That will make this easier.”

She straightened her posture and folded her hands on her lap, looking once again like the unflappable archbishop Byleth had come to know. “To begin, we need to establish a base threshold. Just to be absolutely clear: do you believe the truth of the Goddess?”

“The _ truth _?”

“Meaning that Sothis was, indeed, a Goddess,” supplies Seteth. “There are those who have decided Sothis was merely a human queen with some amount of magic ability.”

Once, Byleth might have been tempted to agree with such an idea, but now… “I know she was more than that.”

She frowns, recalling again that there was a word for them, once. She’d tried to remember it earlier. “She was a mm… n… it started with a ‘Na’ sound. What was it?”

Quietly, Seteth says, “Nabatean.”

“Yes! That!”

“She really is speaking with you.” Rhea breaks into a wide smile, happier than Byleth has ever seen on the woman. “It would be somewhat more accurate to say that she _ made _the Nabateans--us--but I suppose that works. She was our mother. Your great-grandmother.”

Now it is Byleth’s turn to shift uneasily. The statement is true, if internally awkward. “Okay…”

“You may have surmised this already from the importance of Crests, but blood plays a large roll in everything,” says Seteth. “The Nabateans are not widely discussed or even known in Fodlan for a reason.”

“That part is our own doing,” Rhea adds quickly. “We do not _ want _people to know.”

“Why not?”

Again, a shared look. “You were told of Nemesis?”

Nemesis. The name sends a pang of terror through her body so strong that Byleth jerks. _ Nemesis _. 

“Solon was one of his,” she says. It had made so much sense at the time she hadn’t thought about it too hard; she’d simply accepted the truth implanted into her mind by Sothis. “Nemesis and Solon. They were Agarthans.”

But it’s worse than that, isn’t it? Her brow furrows deeper as she searches for the thing that’s bothering her. It isn’t behind the wall, no. This wasn’t something Sothis knew; of that she’s certain. Sothis had seemed just as surprised to hear it at the time. But what was it? Something Rhea had told toward the beginning of the year concerning Nemesis and the Goddess…

Nemesis. Rhea said he was a champion of the Goddess but Sothis didn’t know him. Rhea said he’d been a champion before he… 

He… 

The wall trembles again as shock and fear sway her hold on its foundations. That missing piece of the puzzle, it’s tied to this. She knows that, deep at the root of her. In a way, they’d already told her, hadn’t they? 

Blood. Everything comes back to the blood. The monsters; Crests; magic. It’s blood and bone, all the way down.

“Byleth?” Seteth’s chair scrapes against the floor as he follows her to their feet. She ignores him, crossing instead to the spear mounted on his wall. 

She could ask. Asking would be simpler. But Byleth was already on her feet and approaching the Spear of Assal. Being given an answer was no comparison for _ knowing _. And she needed to know. 

Blood pounds in Byleth’s ears. 

The Spear of Assal is tipped with a long, leaf-shaped blade bracketed between twin axe-heads. The center, where these three blades meet, is somewhat more bulbous than the rest of the spear shaft, gilded and encasing what looks like filigree at first. Upon closer inspection, a pattern emerges. A crest rune; one that Byleth has not seen among the nobility’s set. 

She inhales slow and deep, then holds her breath as she extends her hand, fully expecting Seteth or Rhea to stop her. Maybe they should have.

Immediate, rolling nausea overtakes her as her fingers find the bone-like substance of the spear shaft. She wants to pull away but she can’t. She can’t because her suspicions were right: this isn’t _ bone-like _ . This is bone. Actual bone. Warm, living, _ impossible _bone. 

The knowledge slams into her mind like a tsunami, drowning her in an immediate, cold sweat. Someone is screaming. They’ve been screaming for a very long time.

“No. No, no, nonono,” chants Sothis; chants _ Byleth _. 

She presses her free palm over one ear, trying in vain to block out the screaming, and the others around her. The voices are familiar and wrong. Known and unknown. The world does not make sense.

But one thing does. 

Against the dark back of her eyelids she sees him; half-grown and grinning. His dark aqua hair is wet with the sea; his long, sharp ears are sun-kissed red and peeling; his pale eyes sparkle in the sunlight as he holds out a fish he caught with his bare hands. 

“Look! I caught him for you,” says the boy, clearly proud of his achievement. 

She laughs, the sound is strangely pleasant and child-like though she is no child. She has never been a child. She cups the fish in her own hands and its death throes still, but it is not dead. Nothing could ever die in her hands. 

“He is beautiful, Assal,” says Sothis, “But would he not be more beautiful back in the water where he belongs?”

Rough hands grab her, yanking her away from the boy. Somewhere in the dark Assal is left alone and screaming.

“Byleth? What’s wrong? Talk to me—”

Cichol. Why does he ask her such stupid questions when his son is _ screaming _?

“What did they do?” Her voice is a sodden wreck of itself. She barely notices his sharp intake of breath, or strange the light reflecting off Cichol’s skin, pale and luminous as the moon. “What did they do to my children?”

Rhea’s voice is steady, underscored with a rage so cold it burns. “They killed them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This got really wordy and long, but hopefully not too boring. I keep saying the next chapter should be the last, but I think I really mean it this time. And also is probably going to get somewhat horrific. As a warning.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seteth has to recuse himself after some upsetting news, and Rhea provides the full story behind the crest stones, inadvertently giving Byleth a better idea of what was done to her twenty-one years ago.

“They killed them,” Rhea repeats. In her gaze Byleth sees the dragon hiding beneath Rhea’s skin; her beautiful, dual-natured daughter whose rages are forest fires and whose love soars higher than the clouds. “They scoured the flesh from their bones to fashion their weapons, and pulled the hearts from their chests to bind them.”

The hands clasping Byleth’s shoulders tremble as Cichol—Seteth. He’s called Seteth now—whispers, “Mother?”

He sounds like a boy again; small enough to sit on her knee. It’s that tremble to his voice as well as the incomprehensible horror of her daughter’s words that pull Byleth away from the seething rage trembling behind the cracking wall of her psyche. She closes her eyes, only vaguely aware of how they’d been glowing like lamplights in the dim room, and concentrates a moment on breathing. 

“She’s channeling her,” says Rhea, moving closer. “Mother’s spirit. This is closer than any of them have come.”

Byleth laughs, the sound soft and bitter to her own ears. Rhea still doesn’t realize how wrong she is. Byleth is tempted to tell her… 

And Assal is still screaming. Though she cannot hear him any longer—not without skin contact—she _ can _feel his presence again; confused and terrified. 

Gritting her teeth against what is to come, she opens her eyes and takes the spear off the wall. Once again her senses are assaulted, but this time she’s prepared. 

_ <<Shhh, shhhh, it is okay, my little love; my fisher. You are safe. I have you, now.>> _

His response comes as a wordless barrage of emotion; terror morphing to anger, then surprise and back again. He’s long since past the point of speech or understanding. At least his screaming has stopped.

_ <<Your father is here. Do you want your father?>> _

Grief. Anger. Desire. Anger. Grief. Pleading. 

She holds the spear out to Seteth who is watching her with a look of abject confusion. Belatedly, Byleth realizes how utterly bizarre this must look from the outside. She struggles to find some kind of explanation, and finds herself saying, “I asked you what these felt like to you. The relics.”

“The Spear of Assal is a Sacred Weapon, not a relic,” he says, though he sounds more puzzled than reproachful.

“What’s the difference?”

“There is only a thin one,” says Rhea. “We shall explain in a moment. For now, I should like to know what it is you mean. I have never felt anything from the relics, beyond a certain amount of revulsion.”

“Nothing,” Seteth agrees. “But _ you _feel something?”

“Touch him,” Byleth says. She isn’t sure if this is going to work or not. Too late she considers just how awful it will be for Seteth if it does.

His fingers close around the shaft, just above her own. But the only change in his expression is a curious frown. Meanwhile, Assal sparks with understanding, elation, hope, and so, so much fear. 

“You don’t feel that?”

“Feel _ what _?” he snaps, clearly reaching his limits on patience. Can’t say she blames him. 

Byleth sighs and pushes the Spear into his arms, letting it go. “He wants you. He’s alone when you aren’t touching him.”

Rhea’s hand covers her mouth as Seteth continues to stare at Byleth. He seems to age before her eyes as comprehension settles in; face going pale and eyes wide, and shadows forming beneath them. “You can’t mean...”

“He was your son. Right? Assal?” Byleth closes her eyes again as she examines the mental dam of her power, searching for some way to dredge more about Cichol’s family without becoming overwhelmed. 

The cracks are still there and she’s slipping a bit. Trying to think back, over the litany of her children, she finds herself beset with images of green-haired, green-eyed people mixed with those of purple hair and eyes, orange and orange, pink and pink. Some are pointed-ears and others fanged. Some eyes are reptilian slit, others barred. They come with wings and horns and hooves; a dizzying mix of possibility. 

Who are they? Not _ hers _ but not human, either. The humans belonged to someone else. Someone…

She wobbles, crashing side-ways into Rhea’s arms. 

“Byleth,” Rhea gasps, drawing her arms protectively around the girl as she steadies her. “Do not strain yourself. Let her go.”

Byleth shakes her head, blinking. This time, when she opens her eyes the strange moon-light cast to the room is gone. 

And Seteth is crying, silently.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

#

Seteth excuses himself once he’s regained enough composure to leave. Rhea waits until he is gone before locking the door and recasting the silencing spell. She takes his seat across from Byleth, elbows set against the wood, and folds her hands over her mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” Byleth says again. “If I’d realized—”

“No,” says Rhea. “You are not responsible for their creation, or necessity. If we had known their spirits were… We would have made different decisions. But that time is long past.”

Byleth shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “Are they all like that? You said the Sacred Weapons and the Relics were different.”

“They had a different creator, but the same source.” Rhea sighs. “The Agarthan’s Alchemist made the relics. After, when we had freed ourselves, my brother Macuil made the Sacred Weapons. It was… not an easy decision to make, on any of our parts, but the dead were already gone and their bodies already desecrated. We believed at the time it was the best way for them to get their revenge upon their murderers. And I would be lying if I said we didn’t need the power they could provide. Freeing ourselves was costly in many, many ways.” 

“Why? You said the Relics were gifts from the Goddess.” But that wasn’t the truth, of course. They had changed Nemesis’ role in this story; they already admitted as much. 

Before she can ask, Rhea says, “That’s a stretched truth, at best. It all goes back to Nemesis.”

She puts her hands down flat before her, meeting Byleth’s gaze. “Nemesis, the _ real _ Nemesis, was a warlord at best and a common thug at worst. Our war with the Agarthans goes back a touch further, however. To the days when Mother first settled here.”

Byleth yawns, loud and loud. Her cheeks go hot as she winces, but Rhea doesn’t look bothered. If anything, she seems amused as one can be with tear-stung eyes and bags beneath their eyes. “Sorry.”

“Do not be. Such is the curse of our kind.”

“Yawning?”

“Hibernation. It is how we mend ourselves; mentally, physically, and magically.” Rhea glances Byleth over. “It likely never hit you before this. You were more human than Nabatean, and probably had no need to sleep off great expenditures of magic. Now that Mother has graced you with more of her power—more of her blood—you should know that while there are many benefits, this will be the primary drawback. The balance, if you will.”

Byleth nods, slowly. “It’s why I was out for a week.”

“Yes. Though I suspect being altered had as much to do with that as working your way free of Solon’s spell. Provided that you take it easy, and do not engage in any high-level feats of heroism for a month or two, you shouldn’t need to rest like that again.”

Rhea’s smile is wry at that, like she fully expects Byleth to continue charging into danger headlong, ripping holes in reality and burning the corruption from monsters—

Hm. Come to think of it, no one has mentioned that last part since she’s woken. 

“Please. Just tell me about Nemesis? What did he _ do _?”

“If you are certain you are up for it…”

“I am.”

“All right.” Rhea clears her throat. She levels a long look at the spot where Assal hung a short time ago. “The Agarthans rose against us once when Mother was still with us. She had offered them the succor of her embrace, shared with them her magics, but it was never enough. Their alchemists were obsessed with creating marvels to rival the Gods; of uplifting humanity, intent on taking the place of their own creators.”

Sighing, Rhea shrugs in a way so non committal it speaks volumes to her unease with this story. “They turned on us when we realized the truth: that they had already murdered another progenitor God who had called the area home, our Mother’s own brother, and used his body to fuel their technologies.”

Another flash of orange hair and eyes behind Byleth’s eyelids. Her divine brother… whose name remains locked away, but his face is a blur of his descendants still found among the population long past his death. Sylvain; Ferdinand; Leonie. All fine examples of his blood and her own, mixed down the generations. 

“Enraged, Mother scoured the continent of their technology. She killed their generals and alchemists, burned their notes, and destroyed what materials remained of their unholy deeds. And when she was satisfied that nothing remained which could hurt us, she retired to her Holy Tomb to sleep.”

Byleth’s voice is small and weary as she guesses, “But I—she was wrong.”

“Yes. Unfortunately, she was. One Alchemist remained, at least. I am still not certain how, or how much he had left to work with. I only know that it was enough.”

“Was Solon—?”

“No. The Alchemist who came for us is long dead.” Rhea’s voice is heavy and hot with long-tended rage, “I ate him myself.”

Perhaps, if Byleth were truly the ignorant grand-daughter she pretended to be, such a statement would be upsetting. Instead, she merely nods. 

“In the wake of their leadership being deposed, the remaining Agarthans were in chaos. Some of them begged us for help, but we did not care. We remained in Zanado, and let them—who had been our neighbors—sort themselves out. Certain individuals, such as the man who would become Nemesis, used this to their advantage. He raised himself up as a king along the northern coast.”

That was the land now belonging to Faerghus. Byleth’s brow furrows as she recalls what Seteth told her a few weeks before, sitting out by a barn in the same region. The Kingdom had been allowed to rise because the people there, old tribes of a name long since scoured from history, were being oppressed by the Empire. The Empire, whom Rhea raised to defeat Nemesis… 

_ “Sometimes the mistakes one makes out of anger and hurt are so great their effects are felt for generations.” _

It was all beginning to make a terrible sort of sense.

“The details of what happened after that are… fuzzy, even to me,” Rhea admits. “There were—many Agarthans would say invaders, but others said ‘migrants’ coming into the territory from what are now Sreng and Almyra. Some were human, but others weren’t. Children of deities who made their progeny of stronger material than mundane blood and bone, as our Mother did. Perhaps this is why Nemesis sought out the last Alchemist. Or vice versa.”

Rhea shakes her head. “What I am certain of is that they _ knew _ what they were doing when they came for us. We were not expecting it. We believed— _ I _ believed—they would not be so ‘foolish’. After all, we were no creatures of mortal flesh and blood. We were made to be endless; timeless. Creatures fit to the balance of the earth; not like the quick, mortal things who passed like insects in the sands of time.”

“You couldn’t wake Sothis?”

“We never had the opportunity.” Rhea’s smile is bitter. “They came with a—a _ substance _. Like a salve. They attached small bladder-sacks filled with it to arrows and shot them into the camp. Everyone who was touched was rendered paralyzed; unable to move, much less to assume a larger form.

“They drug us from our homes, stacking us like wood in the city square, and made us watch as they tied mother’s sleeping form to a table and doused her with a liquid that boiled the flesh from her bones.”

Rhea stops, swallowing hard. Her fingers clench and relax upon the table, knuckles going white and pink with each gesture as she fights to maintain her composure. Byleth isn’t sure what to say—there doesn't seem to be words appropriate for such a story—so she keeps her mouth shut and tries desperately not to visualize. 

“That was when he appeared, the Alchemist. He took the heart-stone from her ribs and inscribed it with her name, written in the Agarthan tongue. Then he gave it to Nemesis.”

“How?”

She takes a deep, shaking breath. “He planted it inside Nemesis’ body. It might not have done anything to him, or it might only have turned him into a so-called ‘monster,’ except that we had lived side-by-side long enough with the Agarthans that our blood had already diluted into the slurry of human-kind, alongside many other Gods’ children. The heart-stone, the _ crest-stone _, altered the balance of Nemesis’ blood, pushing him further toward our kind. Instead of killing him, or corrupting him, it gifted him some of our mother’s power.”

“And the weapon…”

“Her spinal column, primarily. The Alchemist ground the rest of her bones into dust, combining them with some other materials, and used the result to alter the shape into a weapon which responded only to her power, as gifted through the crest-stone.”

Byleth reminds herself to breath. The Sword of Creator felt like completion in her hands, did not? It felt like a part of her. And it had been, once.

More than that, though, she was beginning to suspect how her current predicament had come about.

“And the other relics?”

“They repeated the process,” Rhea says. Her voice is steady, but her eyes are distant and burning as she speaks, “His generals were the first to walk among us, choosing the sacrifices to their own greed. Then came lesser leaders of their tribes, until the last of us were left for the Alchemist’s pleasure.

“It was only then, after Nemesis and his armies had marched to war, and the Alchemist was alone with only a token guard, that we managed to free ourselves. He forgot, you see. In his hubris, he forgot how varied we are, compared to humans. He forgot which among us were firstborn children, as unique in our blood as our own mother.”

“Unique…”

Seiros’ smile is a rictus of long-held grief and rage. “I could not free myself. I am a child of the air; more changeable than most of my siblings, but not when bound to flesh. Cichol is a child of the earth; too stable and solid for his own good. But Indech is a child of the water, and water is in the blood. Over time, he was able to flush the poison from his system. And when he had, he summoned a tempest to wash the canyon clean.”

“And you ran?” Byleth guesses. Rhea shakes her head, and her teeth are suddenly a little too sharp. 

“No. We made them _ pay _ , those who remained. And when we had eaten our fill, we gathered the pieces of our family they left behind. _ Then _we fled. I did not want to. But we were… broken. We were broken. And we needed time to put ourselves together again.”

Broken. Yes, Byleth knows quite a bit about being broken. Nothing that compares to this, though. Time has managed to dilute Rhea’s grief; her rage and fear and heartbreak. Not enough, though. The woman’s emotional turmoil is thick, filling the small office with pressure and the smell of ozone; like the calm before a storm. 

They each stew in it a moment, leaving one another to their thoughts until Rhea says, more gently, “The rest is very much as we have told to the population over the years. We knew not whether Nemesis retained any of the poison which laid us low, and so sought human compatriots to fill our ranks. 

“Years passed. In the time since the genocide of Zanado, he made a name for himself as a ruthless and powerful king. Using our mother’s power he raised the mountain range now known as the ‘throat’ of Fodlan, cutting off the flow of migrants from that quarter. The rest of the Agarthans bent the knee or spilled their blood beneath his boots. But eventually I found my Wilhelm…”

“And formed The Empire,” Byleth finishes for her. 

“Technically, Nemesis had already united the Empire’s lands. But yes. We deposed him, and took over the structure he had built. From there… Indech and Macuil were tired of humanity and its troubles. They retired to lands set aside for them, and faded into obscurity. Cichol, Cethleann and I remained among the people as ourselves for a time, until it became clear that certain elements would always be jealous of our very existence.”

“Jealous?”

“They are mortal. We are not. That alone seems to cause friction, even if it weren’t for the… complications of the relics and the crests.”

It takes Byleth a moment to understand that one, before her own encounter in the Sealed Forest supplies the meaning. “The ‘monsters.’”

Rhea nods. “As I mentioned already, our mother’s blood runs through the population, still, but it doesn’t always breed true. At this point it’s so dilute that many are vulnerable to the darker side of the relics.”

“Which is why it’s so important for those who inherit the relics to have crests.”

“Yes. Of course, that has also led to some rather grievous decisions on their part. We have tried to encourage less brutal methods, but there is only so much we can do or say without exposing ourselves.”

Byleth arches an eyebrow at that. She isn’t so sure the church has tried all that hard to eliminate crest-worship—though, perhaps she is being too harsh. After the story she’s just heard, it is more difficult to condemn the woman sitting before her. 

“They can’t only come from the relics corrupting people’s blood. There’s so many,” Byleth says, trying to make it a question.

“The original ones did,” Rhea counters. “Before we realized what was causing the problem. Most were killed, but some escaped into the wilds. There, they bred.”

Again, Byleth’s gorge rises. She takes a moment to tamp it down again, trying not to consider what the lives of those creatures must be like. 

“I’m sure you have questions…?”

“I do,” Byleth agreed before yawning again. She rubbed her eyes, finding them gritty and aching with the need for sleep. “It is getting harder to stay awake, though.”

“I understand. You would prefer returning to your room, I suppose?”

“I would.”

“As you wish. However, I am afraid there is one more matter we must set straight first.”

Even through her mounting exhaustion, Byleth knows what is coming. She disrespected Rhea; argued with her and ignored her commands directly in front of half the monastery. “I’m to be punished. Right?”

“Do not sound so dire. Surely you must know by now I do not mean you any harm?”

“Yes, but I—”

“You did not know,” Rhea says. “That being said, you must understand why I was concerned?”

“It was a trap.” Rhea nods, but then Byleth adds, “It could have been a trap for you. One you wouldn’t have been able to get free of.”

The ozone crackles, but dissipates before building into anything worrisome. Rhea taps her fingers in an agitated rhythm before laying them flat. “You have a point. Perhaps I was too hasty with my judgement. However, I cannot have you disregarding my orders like that again. It isn’t good for moral, and it weakens our position.”

Byleth, who hadn’t been allowed to argue with her father in the field for similar reasons, nods. “I apologize. I’m not sorry for the way things turned out, but… I do see your point.”

“Good. For the record, I am not sorry for that, either.” Rhea offers her a slim smile. “As for your ‘punishment’... I hope it is not one, but I do have a small favour to ask of you once you have recovered.” 

“What?”

“I need you to visit the Holy Tomb, and attempt to channel my Mother once more.”

#

Cethleann—Flayn—is waiting for them when they open the door a brief while later. Her eyes are red and she grips the Caduceus Staff with both hands but the smile she levels at Byleth is soft and kind.

“I thought I might offer you my assistance back to your room, should you have need.”

Byleth looks to Rhea, who merely nods. “I should find Seteth. Flayn, did you see where your brother has gone?”

“I believe has he let himself into the mausoleum.”

“Thank you.” 

Rhea slips past Byleth in the doorway, then pauses. She places her hand gently upon Byleth’s arm, looking at the girl again. “It is good to have you with us,” she says, her voice and eyes soft with a fondness Byleth is only just beginning to recognize. Has it been there this whole time?

The Archbishop takes her leave, and Flayn steps up to Byleth’s side.

“You may lean on me as you like, Professor.”

Byleth gives her a nod of thanks. Together, they make a slow progression toward the dormitory. She’s rather impressed that the girl waits until they’ve come out into the open air, chilled with fresh-fallen snow and absent of most wanderers of this time, before she begins to speak.

“I knew we had much in common. I could sense it. My brother said you are Rhea’s niece?”

That was the lie Rhea and Seteth had already worked up; Rhea told her just before their meeting ended. With the strong familial resemblance between them it was harder to deny the obvious, and Rhea being the sister of Byleth’s late mother would easily work for now. Blurring the lines between generations, her father had written. She finally understood precisely what meant.

Have they told Flayn the truth? 

“I am. Did he also mention…” She glances at the staff in Flayn’s arms.

The girl wilts, and nods. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry.” She was saying that an awful lot today.

“Do not be. I do not know that it would have changed anything, had we known. This form is easier to handle than urns and vials. Perhaps we would not have left them languishing in a tomb for so long, were we aware, but we cannot change what was already done; only what comes next.”

“That’s… very wise of you, Flayn.”

“I have had a long time to learn the value of looking ahead, rather than being stuck behind,” she says, smiling up at Byleth as they reached the professor’s door. There, Byleth pauses with her hand upon the doorknob and pulse thumping in her throat. 

Flayn is not wrong, she thinks. Learning to put the past behind you; it isn’t easy, but it is important. And yet, disregarding the things the past can teach you, the ways in which the past shapes the world’s present, would be just as large a mistake as trying in vain to correct mistakes long made.

“Flayn?”

The girl, already descending the steps, stops and turns back to Byleth. “Yes?”

Byleth’s gaze roams from Flayn’s innocent-seeming countenance, which belies both her age and the horrors the girl has witnessed, to the swirled end of the staff she carries. Her hand extends forward, but she pauses before it meets bone. “May I?”

A flicker of shadow crosses Flayn’s eyes. Though it is clear the girl wishes to deny this, she nods briefly. “If you must.”

Byleth takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and presses her fingers to the staff.

The cawing of seagulls and the sound of waves beating against the shore. Sunlight glistens across the ocean stretched out before them, beautiful and blue as the sky above. 

Soft fingers slide through her own, and she looks up into the rounded face of Caduceus, heads taller than herself, whose curly hair is pale as seafoam, and whose eyes are the muted green of a murky ocean floor. 

The image fades, replaced by the tired, lonely grumble from a woman long forgotten. Perhaps it is the familiarity of Flayn’s presence that has soothed Caduceus, or maybe her age gave her presence of mind to bear years spent in isolation whereas Assal could not. Either way, it is proof that this existence does not have to be a torment for them. 

That is a small, cold relief. 

“Is she…?” Flayn doesn’t seem to know how to finish that sentence, but Byleth understands all the same.

“She’s happy to be with you,” she whispers. There aren’t many people in sight, but if Dedue were in his room he might hear them speaking through his door. 

Byleth draws her hand back as the urge to yawn hits her anew. She sways, leaning into the wall behind herself. 

“Get some rest,” says Flayn. “Everyone is hoping to have you back in class before the school year ends. There’s only three more weeks. They will be most disappointed if you continue exhausting yourself.”

The end of the school year. Byleth had nearly forgotten how close it was, with all the commotion. Another pang of sadness hits her as she realizes how much time she’s lost with her students, and how much more time she stands to lose.

But there’s nothing for it now, is there? Even if she wanted to change the past, she didn’t have the resources to do so now. 

“You’re right. Goodnight, Flayn. And… maybe sometime soon you and I can go fishing again? Just the two of us.”

The girl looks slightly puzzled, but smiles all the same. “I believe I would like that.”

Left alone, Byleth returns to her room and falls into her familiar bed. She expects to be asleep before her head hits the pillow. Instead she lies there, her mind swirling with images of blood and bone; with the blazing lines of crests filling her imagination; with the humming of her dead mother in her ears.

Blood and bone, she thinks again, as the truth settles into her like a tangible thing. Her fingers press against the space just above her breast, where her heart would beat if hers were human.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whooooooooo buddy. OK. So this was probably the hardest chapter to write to date; trying not to repeat points too often or contradict myself across multiple fics. XD Still, I'm ready to let it end and move on to the absolute mess that will be the timeskip. We're headed REALLY far off the rails with that, so, I hope everyone is prepared and ready for massive AU territory? Good? Good.
> 
> I also really want to thank everyone who has been reading. I don't think I've written this much, this quickly in *years,* and a lot of that has to do with y'all's reception. You've all been so amazing and supportive, and I want you to know how much that means to me. <3
> 
> So look for the first chapter of the timeskip.... maybe later this week, possibly next Monday. I'm going to be confining it to a single fic on AO3, though so far my outline is just... man I don't want to think about how long this going to be. XD 
> 
> I am a bit torn on the name for that fic, though. I wanted to do something like the route names in the game. I've been calling it "Blue Sea Moon" after the moon in which the Goddess is meant to be reborn, but given how this fic has ended I'm reconsidering. Perhaps something along the lines of "Blood and Bone," or "Blood Red Sea." hm...

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to get to comment responses soon (I try to stay up on that, and so sorry for slacking!) but I spent the long weekend forcing myself more into the Crimson Flower route, and outlining a major fic undertaking that's about to happen. These chapters are going to be a bit shorter, and maybe i'll manage to stick to my planned three...though probably not, knowing me. Either way, things are heating up around here!
> 
> Also, bonus point for those who get the title reference. ;D


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